Global Political and Legal Thought

This seminar explores how political and legal philosophers, as well as leaders of political movements and established states, envision international order. It asks and critically assesses how they imagine international politics is governed and how it should be governed. 

The course begins with a reexamination of major Northern and Western traditions in international jurisprudence and political theory, as seen through the eyes of classical and modern political leaders and philosophers. It covers Realism, Liberalism, Socialism, and Fascism. The lens then broadens to include thinkers from the global South, including Nehru, Senghor, and Biko, and explores how they have addressed the challenges of post-colonialism.

In considering these international orders, we will discuss their insights into the connections among issues of order and justice, identity and legitimacy, peace and war, cooperation and conflict, intervention and independence, and international equality and inequality.

We conclude with a discussion of Cosmopolitanism and Rawls’s Law of Peoples.